The Superpower of Each Multi-Media Platform

Choosing the right platform for your content is the single biggest deciding factor in whether or not you are going to meet your business goals for that content. (Unless you’re making content without having a specific, measurable business goal for it – then the biggest deciding factor is going to be going back to your business and growth plan and figuring out what the heck you’re making content for.)

Great content on the wrong platform probably won’t hurt you – but it’s not going to be terribly helpful for you, either. Figuring out which platform is the best for you is a matter of what your goals are, and how good the platforms are at meeting those goals.

We call the things that platforms are best at doing their superpowers – and knowing what they are will give you an edge in terms of creating content campaigns that meet business objectives.

So let’s look at 6 different content platforms and what superpowers they have that you can use to advance your business goals. (If one of your goals is a quick path to revenue – check out Making Money from Multi-Media Content!)

We’re going to cover blogging, video, podcasting, livestreaming, courses and books (which are included because of how easily other content can become books and vice versa!)

Now, as I mentioned briefly what we’re about to cover are rules of thumb – there are always going to be exceptions and examples based on your industry and your audience. Different people use different platforms in different ways – and what can be a rock-solid strategy for one industry, might not fly so well in another! Always defer to how your audience behaves.

That said – let’s talk superpowers.

Blogging

Let’s start with blogging – the old faithful online content platform. The superpower of blogging is information sharing. You can explore topics in-depth, demonstrate your industry expertise, present your ideas as a thought leader, and importantly, you can sort, tag and organize your blog content to be crawled by search engines, and to create in-depth content paths for your audience to follow.

Blogging has high conversions, and the long-term benefits of a content archive people can search and explore are massive. Written content is great for repurposing and easy to share. Overall, blogging is a content platform you should consider unless you and your entire team hate writing like poison.

Videos

Next up are videos. The superpower of video is conversions. In videos, you’re taking advantage of more senses than on any other platform. People can see you, or what you’re demonstrating – they can hear, and often, they can read what’s on screen and, here’s the important part -quickly and easily take action on your call to action. This is huge. In addition to making an emotional connection by being as physically ‘present’ in multiple senses, you can direct people to take a next action right that moment – and they’ll usually be in a position to do it.

Youtube, in particular, has an amazing ability to help direct people from one video to the next, increasing your touchpoints with them, and videos are easy and compelling to share – increasing your reach.

Livestreaming

Livestreams are a lot of fun – and when they’re done well – can save a company huge amounts of time and money, while improving relationships with the audience. The superpower of Livestreaming is engagement.

The two-way dialogue that happens in a livestream, that makes them great for teaching and training, making offers for sale, and providing customer support. A lot of people use a livestream in conjunction with a more one-to-many platform to deepen their relationship with the audience. Livestreams can’t often be reused, but you can use them to test new content ideas, get deep insight into what makes your audience tick, and give fans of other platforms a chance to connect with you personally.

Podcasting

Podcasting is in its glory days at the moment, and its superpower is relationships.

There are more and more listeners, distribution networks, advertising dollars and formats than ever before. Podcasting is the ultimate Pull Marketing – your listeners listen when THEY want to – and you become a part of their lives in a way that simply doesn’t happen for most other platforms. Podcast listeners make you a part of their schedule and have incredibly high rates of remembering who you are, what brands you work with, and what you say.

And on the guest end of things – if you have an interview or panel style show, then all of a sudden you have a magic key that opens networking doors previously closed to you. Someone who may not want to jump on a discovery or sales call is, all of a sudden, going to be very interested in being a guest on your podcast. Funny that.

This more than makes up for pretty dismal conversions from podcasts – and when you treat guest booking and promotion as networking and relationship building – you’re creating an asset that can propel your business forward in many ways.

If you’re looking for a way to add value to a service, to prevent the kinds of errors and problems many people run into by teaching best practice, or to grow a community of people who may not be ready to hire done-for-you or personal services, but CAN become more ready to hire you with a little training in advance – courses can really be a great investment.

Books

Finally – books. The Superpower of a book is stature. We usually recommend a book in conjunction with another platform or two – since you’re making content anyway, it’s the ultimate repurpose from other content platforms (like your podcast, blog, or livestreams!) and launching one is much, much easier when you have a robust following on your other platforms.

So not only is it a way to double, or triple the value you get out of your other content platforms, nothing really says “I’m the authority” the way a book does. A reader is a more or less captive audience, and you can use copies as promotional tools as well – to enhance your in-person networking or to grow your online audience, by giving it away as an opt-in.

Basically – if you’re generating content anyway, why NOT turn it into a book while you’re at it? (And on the flip side, if you already have a non-fiction book – and want to learn how to turn it into a valuable podcast to extend its reach and generate more business – check out our Book to Podcast Info Page)

So – those are the content platforms and their superpowers.

To *use* them, first, determine what your goals are for your content. If you are really interested in beefing up your SEO and online findability – blog (with a mind to repurposing your blog content!) If you need a bigger network and you need it fast – podcast. If you have an audience that is desperate to learn from, engage with, and buy from you – make them videos or a course.

Cover Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash